Election Night

E-Day felt like another day at the office in a lot of ways. I had to be at the office at 5:15 instead of the usual 9:00, and the operation was different from the usual, but I didn't feel the enormous culmination of the last two years (or eight, or forty depending on how you're counting) bearing down on that one day as I went about my job. Like the last three months, I knew I had a job to do, and, while I was aware of the national hoopla, I didn't let it distract me too much. I did get a tingle when I realized that the polls were open and people were voting, but for most of the day I kept my fatigued head down and kept at it.

It only started to hit me when I got the call from the next rung up the ladder that my job was done. No more five hours of calls. No more nagging strangers to volunteer (I was doing vol recruitment 6 hours before the polls closed!). No more battles with the printer. There would be more people coming in asking for yard signs and other "chum." That will go on until they cut off my campaign phone and possibly longer (there will DEFINITELY be at least one post about chum and the misery it caused).

I stepped outside into the fresh air that I didn't get quite enough of in my long days in the office and glowed for a little bit. The moment I had been awaiting for months had finally arrived. I was finished. I could go home.

When I went back into the office, a crowd of about 15-20 had gathered for the moment a lot of the world had been awaiting for months or years for some. The group at the office consisted of some of my most devoted volunteers, my host and caretaker for the last three months, some people who had volunteered sporadically, a local barber who had allowed us to use his shop as a satellite headquarters, and some who had only watched the campaign and hadn't been involved. The mood was festive. The possibility of defeat didn't seem to be on anyone's mind. I felt good about our chances, but the thought that we could lose was somewhere in my calculations.

My mood followed a different trajectory than the rest of the crowd. I was well aware of which states were most important and which hardly required announcing. I was also extremely fatigued, energized by excitement, but completely out of reserves. I didn't cheer half as much as anyone else when Obama won Maine, and I cheered the loudest when he won Pennsylvania. When he won Ohio I knew it was over, but no one else seemed to.

The eruption happened just after the polls closed in California. In practically no time at all its electoral votes were awarded to Obama, putting him over 270 and giving him the victory. My memories of the five minutes after that involve no words. Just screams and crying, elated faces. Most of the people there were African American, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone so overwhelmed as they were at that moment.

For much of the campaign, the higher ups kept us in the field motivated with quotas. The national picture was always somewhere on my mind, but I was fighting most immediately for good numbers. Looking back, my mind replaces the drive to hit my benchmarks with those faces. Soon the actual Obama presidency will begin, and I'll get more reminders of what I fought for in his bills, appointments and speeches, but I don't think anything will make me understand the significance of that moment more than those faces, some of them over 70, crying with joy, the ghosts of their ancestors crying with them.